


roses and poppies

by thnderchld



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Borderline Personality Disorder, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, hard angst, i was really emo, jet is emo and thats okay, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 05:13:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thnderchld/pseuds/thnderchld
Summary: The sequel to Breathing Exercises I Will Never Figure Out. Jet lives, and he has to live with the repercussions. He has to figure out how to be okay on his own.





	roses and poppies

**Author's Note:**

> It has been two years since I wrote breathing exercises i have never figured out. I left you all thinking that Jet died in that cavern beneath Ba Sing Se. And, I’m afraid to say, by the time most of you read that tragedy, I had already started working on this sequel. But things happened, and I never published.
> 
> I wrote the last 3 paragraphs of this story 2 years after the rest of it. And because of this, a lot of me is different. I am different to the cis girl who sought refuge in stories of their own pain. I am different to the cis girl who thought they were alone in the world. I am different to the child who couldn’t see life 5 years in front of them.
> 
> In that time, I formed in ways I never imagined. I travelled the world. I lost friends and then I gained friends. Some friends came back. I have fallen in and out and in love again. I am 16 and while I am still sad sometimes, while there are some shades of mental illness that have yet to leave, I am so much better than I was. I am still coping with falling in and out of the self destructive things I used to tell myself just how UNneeded I was. But those weren’t true then and they aren’t true now.
> 
> Good luck, my readers. Thank you for everything.

Jet wakes up, unfortunately. He’s not in the green-surrounded cavern anymore, but the heat streams ready and golden across his face. He can’t move, not even a finger. He tries to open his mouth, call for Smellerbee. Or Li.

Maybe he really is dead. The thought crosses his mind, but then he becomes aware of the way his lungs scream for air. Gulping, the rise of his chest makes his body shriek with pain, his eyes brimming with tears that spark in the corner of his eye.

He squeaks slightly. Then his eyesight is filled with the blurred face of Smellerbee. The one he would always want to see first. If he is dying, he gets to say goodbye.

“Jet’s waking up!” She’s grinning, her eyes shimmering with happiness. Her big brother is alive.

Jet takes this to mean he’s not dead.

With a great effort, he moves his fingers, eventually. Finally he sits up. He gasps while Smellerbee’s hand rests at the top of his spine, gripping his shirt. “Thank goodness,” she sighs. “Longshot and I thought you were going to die.”

Jet swallows his pain and grins at her. Too widely, he thinks.

“You won’t be able to move your legs anymore. I’m sorry.”

He nods. “I’m a-alive.”

A rush of realisation rushes through him as he notices the absence of a shirt. He tries not to look at the scattered lines that dash across his body, the red splash of a burn, the two words that stick out. One peeking out from his pants, _REST_ shaming him, laughing at him. _No rest for the wicked._

“Damn right you are. If you died, I’d be the one going straight to the Spirit World and smacking the sense out of you. Who are you to go risking your life like that!”

“The Avatar’s bison-”

“Is free.”

Smellerbee’s arms are suddenly around him, awkwardly. He smiles.

Then, “Where’s Li?”

Smellerbee pulls back, and the only thing outside of happiness is the crease between her eyebrows. “We’ve had you here in this apothecary place for weeks. But from what I’ve heard, no one’s been able to find him. Or his grandfather.”

Jet doesn’t correct her. Instead he smiles weakly. “So he went home, after all.”

When Smellerbee goes to talk to the apothecary, Jet lets the shadow fall upon him and he slumps forward. His fist strikes the table beneath him, and his sobs burst forward. Five minutes, he’ll allow himself.

Five minutes is what he deserves, after all.

 

 

It’s a long time before he manages to make contact with the Duke and Pipsqueak. It won’t be long now, before the comet. He’s in an Earth Kingdom colony when Smellerbee notices a tall shape, an excited voice.

Then she’s rushing forward and picking up a small boy, wrapping him in a hug. “Jet! Would you look at that!”

Pipsqueak looks like he’s seen a ghost. So does the Duke, for that matter. They are no longer aware of Jet’s second in command, and their eyes are like tiny ropes knotting around his throat. A memory rushes through him, of a large room full of women and a single sentence. He shudders.

“Katara said you were dead,” the Duke gulped. “Are you dead?”

Jet might as well be; his heart spluttering to halt. He keeps his game face, though. “Only the legs, buddy.”

Then the Duke is knocked out of his stupor, clambering to hug his brother, leaning over the wheelchair, captured in Jet’s embrace. He’s sobbing messy sobs, full of energetic warmth that makes Jet’s skin squirm and want.

“Kata-ara said that you’d di-ied and so did Toph and I mi-missed you so much. K-Katara _thought_ you were dead, she did. She thought you were dead for real.”

“I’m right here.” Jet glances up at Pipsqueak. “You looked after him?” A weak smile tugs at his lips.

Pipsqueak nods, a smile wide on his lips.

“I missed you, too,” he says.

The Duke pulls back, glancing at Jet. “Did you keep my drawing?”

Jet nods and trains his face into seriousness, pats the Duke on the head. “My most prized possession.”

His little brother giggles and Jet hears home in the sound. “What about your hookswords?”

“My hookswords aren’t worth shit compared to my family.”

The Duke laughs again. “One time Katara got mad at me for swearing. Well not _mad,_ but she lectured Pipsqueak.”

Jet grins wider, like the sun settling in his skull, behind his eyes. “She would.” He glances around at all of the people he loves. (Almost all of them. Even after everything, he will never have them all) “We should get something to eat,” he suggests.

Smellerbee beams, her eyes forming crescents of joy. “As long as it’s not your cooking.”

“Fuck you.”

“Language, language.”

They get noodles and they sit in the park, trying to turn the saplings to trees with the power of imagination. Jet dangles his feet in the river, lets the cold touch just the brink of his consciousness. It tingles.

“So what happened? With the Gaang.”

“A boy joined us after a while. His name was…Zuko. He said he knew you.”

Jet’s eyes widen. “Li,” he says. “Bee and Longshot knew him as Li.”

Smellerbee looks at him, frowning. “Your boyfriend?”

The Duke cocks his head in confusion, his brownish eyes narrowing. “Your boyfriend was the Prince of the Fire nation?” he asks.

“ _What?”_

The air is expelled from Smellerbee’s lungs all at once, and then she’s glancing between Jet and the Duke. Jet had known this, but he doesn’t make a noise, listening for more of Zuko’s presence.

Said nine-year-old shrugs. “Zuko’s the Prince of the Fire Nation. He ran away from home. Last time we saw him he was battling his- his _sister._ I could never battle Smellerbee, by the way, but if I did I would win. Anyway, he yelled up at her asking what she was doing or something and she said ‘Celebrating becoming an only child’. She pushed him off the ship. Holy mother of shit her fire is _blue._ ”

Jet grips the fabric of his pants, staring at the water. “Did she kill him? Did Azula become an only child?”

“They both fell. Katara caught him. Azula got out, too. That’s what we know.”

Jet’s brow is starting to sweat. Zuko is starting to hurt him from the inside, but he _has_ to know.

“Did he talk about me?”

Smellerbee is keeping a careful eye on Jet, now. He has to keep his calm.

The Duke sighs. “He talked to Katara. I asked him one time if you were friends, but he just blushed and nodded. I-I had to be the one to tell him, when he came.” The Duke looks down, frowning deeply.

“Tell him what,” Jet gulps.

“That you died.”

The blood rushes from Jet’s face. _Zuko thinks I’m dead._ He feels a rush of frost gather inside his stomach, reminding him of fluffy white mould, of the rotting inside his belly. It sits beside him like death, and it’s too familiar for comfort. Suddenly Jet shoves at the earth beneath him and he lets the icy water swallow him up.

 

 

It’s a while later, and one day he’s getting ready for bed when the lantern flashes upon his torso. Smellerbee’s gaze falls to his arms. “I’ve never seen you without your shirt on. Not in years, at least.” A bucket of ice cubes fills him; fills Jet to the very top. He hasn’t made a mark in months, but the scars are still there. Always will be, too.

Smellerbee squints up at him with suspicion. “Where did they come from?”

Jet laughs nervously. “You know, falls and tumbles and scrapes and shit.”

He hopes she can’t see the _word._

“Really?” Smellerbee asks; her voice is quiet like snow.

Jet nods, and the lie fills him up like acid.

She squints. “ _Really?_ They’re too parallel, surely.”

He glances around the crevasses of his mind for an escape route. “Thorns,” he blurts. “I fell into a pile of thorns. Rose-daisy thorns.”

Smellerbee snorts. “There weren’t any of those in our forest.”

“In Ba Sing Se!”

Smellerbee strikes a sidetable. “Bullshit, Jet! I want you to tell me the truth!”

Jet coughs and sits up. In that moment he wishes with an eager pain for his height so that he can loom above her; defy everyone, make them leave him alone. Not that his height ever deterred any one of his siblings, but it would help to have some moral support.

He snarls, almost. “What the fuck do you want me to say?! That I did them to myself! If you’re pressing so hard, seeing _how vertical they are_ , surely you can figure it out!”

Smellerbee presses a hand to her mouth, muffling the sobs coming into her palm. “How _could_ you, Jet? Wh-surely you thought about what would happen when I did see? How the _fuck_ could you do that to yourself, to your family?! After everything we’ve done trying to survive you go out and try to give yourself a blood disorder. Shit, Jet, don’t tell me that you tried to- to die- or-”

“I didn’t try to do _that_ , don’t worry.”

Jet can’t say anything more, just shakes his head and focuses on the increase of heat in his face, swallows the trembles in his breath, tries to live on the feeling of flames eating up his insides. But _no._ Fire like that can’t eat him up. Fire doesn’t have that right anymore.

“What d-did you do to cause this, Jet? What did _I_ do to you? What happened that was so bad you wrote it upon your skin?”

Jet chokes. “It’s not your fault, Bee. I did this to myself. You did nothing.”

“But surely if I knew I could’ve- I could’ve _helped-_ ”

“No, Bee. I didn’t want you to help me. Surely you can figure that out. None of this is your fault.”

He looks up at her and this is another form of undressing, surely; letting someone see your red cheeks, letting them see the salt. Crying in front of someone has always been the ultimate weakness, the most unforgivable sin, but once you’ve sinned can you consider yourself a free man?

Smellerbee walks forward and for a split, broken second he wonders if she’ll strike him. Part of him wishes she would, put that piece of broken glass between and behind them. But she doesn’t.

 Crying can lead to separation, but it can also lead to union; halcyon days are best when there are wars waging. (that’s a memory he’ll carry to the end of his days, that happiness was best spent in defiance)

Smellerbee wraps her arms around him in a hug, sobbing her heart out into his chest. When they’re sitting he is still taller, and thus she presses her face into the scarred skin of his collarbone and the paint on her cheeks is smearing into his skin; deep auburn against the gold.

“Love you, sis,” he sniffs, holding her closer.

“You’re an asshole, big brother,” she grunts into him.

 

He hears about Zuko becoming Fire Lord. He hears about the girl he’s dating. Maya, or something like that. It hurts, it numbs. How selfish of him, to feel anger at the boy who thinks he’s dead dating someone else. How selfish of him to feel hope when Maya leaves four months later.

Then Jet gets up the nerve to go to him. It’ll be hard, but he could do it. He could see Zuko again. It would hurt less than the knowledge that to that Firebender he was literally dead. And thus he packs his bags, to put a mind to rest. It’s the least Zuko deserves, for putting up with Jet in Ba Sing Se.

He tells his family this, and explains it with the reminder that, A, Jet is listed as dead; and B, if he ever, (if he _does_ ) in the darkest parts of his memory, in the lightest parts of flames, loved that Fire Lord then he _deserves_ that. If he knows anything about Zuko, it’s that he would regret. In that case, he can regret one less.

He manoeuvres his way into the palace, becomes a servant boy. Does what limited jobs he can. Finally he ends up cleaning the Fire Lord’s chambers. One night, as Zuko climbs into his bed, sinks into the white, Jet doesn’t leave. He hides for a while in the darkest shadows, and then creeps forward so that he is standing above Zuko, using the wall for support.

“Zuko,” he whispers, glancing around to make sure that they’re alone. He’d hidden in the closet for half an hour, waiting for them all to leave. So he’s not going to let Zuko go lightly.

“Zuko,” he whispers again, louder, and the Fire Lord groans.

“ _Li,”_ Jet hisses and Zuko’s eyes flash open. He lights a lantern with his finger and turns to face Jet. Then he pales, ashen. For a brief moment Jet wonders if he’s shocked Zuko to death.

Then the firebender chokes out some words.

“You’re dead.”

“No I’m not.”

Zuko shakes his head, and his hair is longer than Jet’s ever seen. Which means that the cut of Zuko’s hair ends at his shoulder, mussed by the pillows.

“I’ve seen you too many times to be fooled. I’m dreaming. Again.”

“Zuko, I’m _real._ You’re awake. Well, hardly.”

Zuko rubs his good eye with his fist and then takes a good look at Jet. Jet lets himself slump back into his wheelchair, before directing himself into the lamplight.

“How are you alive? The _Duke_ said you were dead.”

“And you once said you were Earth Kingdom.” Jet smiles, a wisp of curling cheeks and shattered humour.

Zuko reaches forward, and his fingers land on Jet’s cheek. Jet’s eyes flutter shut at the sensation. He lets Zuko touch his way back to reality.

Zuko’s thumb slips over his nose, his lips, up over his brow. “You haven’t cut your hair in ages, it seems.”

Jet snorts, but something feels nice; knowing that Zuko has remembered his appearance. “Haven’t cared enough.”

They lapse into silence again, Zuko reaching out, Jet leaning forward. It feels like old times.

“Have you dated anyone?”

“Haven’t cared about anyone.”

A held breath. “Then why are you here?”

Jet sighs long and deeply. “I couldn’t let you think I was dead. I couldn’t let you think you were dreaming about a ghost.” He smiles half-heartedly. His eyes open.

“Plus, the food we _servants_ got wasn’t too bad.”

Zuko shuddered. “I tried to dismiss them, because damn it I can dress myself, but then where would they go? _You_ go?”

Jet lets his hand slip around Zuko’s, stilling the palm against his cheek, the thumb against his lower eyelid. “I missed you,” he sighs. “So badly.”

Zuko nods, and pulls his hand away from Jet’s face, savouring the slide of Jet’s fingers against his. Then he gets to his knees and wraps his arms around Jet, pressing his face into the fabric of Jet’s shirt.

The revolutionary twines his fingers in Zuko’s hair, pulling him closer. At first he thinks that Zuko is crying, but then it turns out that they are laughs collected on his tongue, tears collected and converted to the first possible escape.

“It’s okay, babe. I’m here,” Jet whispers, and his voice sounds like candlelight.

“I dreamed about you. I didn’t know how you died, I’d just heard that you _did._ My brain thought of all the different ways you could’ve…Did it hurt?”

Jet is silent. He pulls himself up from the wheelchair and Zuko scoots over, letting Jet slump on the bed with a groan. He pulls the covers up so that his face is barely visible. Zuko’s arm wraps tight and snug around Jet, pulling him closer so that heat consumes the Earth Kingdom boy.

“It hurt more waking up,” he mutters, glancing away. Then he looks back to the other boy (are they not but boys? children in an elderly war? or did the war make old of them too?) and rests his forehead against Zuko’s. “You know, _adrenalin_ and all that shit that rich firebender psycho- _therapists?_ \- say.”

“Psychologists and psychiatrists.” Jet becomes aware of the heavy way Zuko breathes. Not that that means anything, but Zuko’s breath has always been light, wavering. Now, though, it’s like a strong and heavy beast is seated on Zuko’s chest; making his breaths shaky and dripping with effort.

“You’re struggling. To breathe, I mean.”

Zuko nods. He presses his lips together tightly. Then he sits up, pulling the shirt from his head. His skin gleams with taut red scar tissue. But most of it Jet’s seen before. It’s familiar to him; the lines of whips, scorching whips, criss-crossing across his back. But nestled just between Zuko’s ribcage is the burn in the shape of a star.

“How did-” Jet keeps his eyes on Zuko, frowning.

“I ha-had to fight my sister. On the day of Sozin’s Comet. She tried to hit Katara but I took the impact. Katara didn’t deserve that. She got my heart to work again. Literally, I mean. She controlled the blood in it and started it.”

“You dated Mai, though.”

Zuko shrugs. “I didn’t want to. She-she threatened me when she saw me again. It was a joke, but every time someone’s made a threat in the past, it’s never been a lie.”

Jet shudders. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Zuko touches Jet’s cheek again. “Could I kiss you?”

“You could. And you can.” Jet grins up at him. And thus, Zuko’s leaning down, resting his lips against Jet’s as if he’s a home he’s coming back to. A home he’d thought had burned.

And so they rest. That’s what it is, too. Rest. When Jet lets himself go to the kiss, his mind becomes suddenly _clear_ and empty all at once. There’s just a rewiring, a- a sewing together of all the seams. It’s like peace.

Zuko pulls away and there is no need to gasp for breath.

“Fall asleep here. Stay,” Zuko says, and his voice wavers as if he’s trying not to plead.

“Was there ever any doubt?”

Zuko falls asleep with his head on Jet’s chest, and Jet rests with a bearable lightness in his heart.

 

 

There’s a…strange reaction to the new appearance in Zuko’s life, to say the least. The big news is that the Fire Lord is ‘openly gay’. One day he slumps into the chair besides Jet and groans. “I’m not gay, for crying out loud. _People.”_

Jet looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not? What are you, then?”

Zuko smirks at him. “Bisexual.”

“What does that mean?”

“Attraction to same and different genders.”

Jet blinks and hums. “So there’s a word for it.”

Zuko chuckles and places a hand on his shoulder. “New word for you. Speaking of words, how good is your reading?”

Jet grimaces. “Why? My village burned when I was eight and from when I was twelve I lived in a tree.”

Zuko scoots closer, rests his head against Jet’s shoulder, puffs a small explosion of warmth onto Jet’s jaw. “The council wants me to have an _educated_ partner. They’re more lax on-” He gestures to the space between them, “this than the Earth Kingdom royals but it’s still not good. They’re all heterosexual Fire Nation men. They’re still conservative fucks. It’s fine if you can’t read much.”

Jet shrugs. “You know, it’d be nice to see why books satisfy you so much.”

Zuko kisses him on the cheek.

 

 

Jet’s in a wave of happiness, he grins and laughs loudly. He thinks, _Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. This is really bad._

He has never slept long anyway, but one night he’s woken from rest by a dream of flames, of siblings amiss, of guilt. Another he dreams of being kicked, burned, _unwanted._ He dreams of Zuko helping him to his feet, but there’s still the smell of smoke steaming up from his hips. He starts to dream about injury, and harm, and that starts to permeate into the real world.

When he scathes politicians with wit, misguided smiles, he fears them, feels their pointed gazes crawling under his skin. He thinks of the ways they could hurt him, of the ways that he’ll be destroyed.

He rests against Zuko in the night, his breath coming cool against Zuko’s skin. “You seem to be handling your mental wellbeing better,” Zuko comments, and Jet tries not to stiffen, not to freeze. Zuko’s fingers trail up and down Jet’s spine, the Fire Lord smiling at the contact.

Jet sighs at his touch and works his face into something resemblant of a smile. “I was just stressed. For a long time.”

Zuko grunts too, wraps his legs tightly around Jet’s waist, his fingers wrapping in Jet’s hair, tugging as if at thread.

He leans up and brushes his lips over Jet’s. Jet smiles, and chuckles. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m all good, now.”

Jet almost wakes Zuko one night, when a nightmare leaves him gasping in a cold sweat. He groans in exasperation, and promptly leaves the bed, grabbing Zuko’s discarded robe from the floor; smiling pleasantly at the heat.

He wheels his way through the halls like a ghost; servant girls stare at his slowly wafting figure. No doubt there are a lot of ghosts in this place, he thinks. It’s too big to not be filled by bones.

Finally he reaches the library; where the darkness is suddenly so big it seems to dwarf him. _Irony,_ he thinks to himself. He finds some matches and lights a candle. Then he looks for books.

The sun crawls above the edge of the Caldera and he can finally read in the light. There’s a new book on Psychiatric Illnesses in his hand. He reads the title under his breath. It’s in alphabetical order.

He flicks through the pages until he gets to _B._ He scans them, takes in the symptoms, finding nothing like him anywhere. Then he sees it: _Borderline Personality Disorder: A disorder marked by unstable identity and relationships._

_Symptoms: Deep Feelings of Insecurity_

_Impulsiveness_

_Confused, Conflicted Feelings_

His heart picks up speed. His skin screams for a visible agony, release of red. No matter how far the distance, there’s always a train station where you stepped off.

He slams the book down and he spends a few minutes gasping for breath. He thinks it over in his head. _I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I think. I have to look further, but I am everything in a page._

After a few more books worth and checklists ticked, Jet has Borderline Personality Disorder, and he isn’t broken after all.

 

 

While they’re in the bath, the water lapping against them and soaking them deeply; Zuko’s hands smoothing soap over Jet’s skin, he realises that Zuko is counting his scars. The Fire Lord’s fingers tap every line, his lips moving around soundless numbers. Jet sighs into his touch and arches so that he leans towards Zuko. “Three hundred and sixteen,” Zuko mutters, in the end.

“That’s a lot, I think?” Jet glances at him with inquisitive eyes. But of course he doesn’t need to know maths to know that there are a lot of scrawled lines on his skin. He has the evidence, the reminder, the knowledge every day of his life. It keeps him _stable._

Zuko frowns and takes Jet’s hand; his pale fingers curling around Jet’s wrist. He leans forward and kisses Jet on the cheek, his pinkish lips pressing, taking as little as he can, a charitable king.

Jet’s arms wrap around his shoulders and of course it is Jet who takes all the proof of love, all of the need for this other man. He takes it and converts it into the fuel that his heart eats when he’s all alone, shadows crowding his skin and gathering dust so that the floor doesn’t have to.

Zuko’s nose presses against his neck and Jet smiles and takes yet more; for these few minutes he can see himself as Zuko sees him. He is someone worth something when he’s in Zuko’s hands, fingers coaxing, skin coming loose at Zuko’s touch.

He falls apart like this; the vision of himself as Jet and the vision of himself as Zuko’s Jet split; their fluids mingle, and he feels _okay._ It’s a temporary thing, for people like him there is as much waiting as there is suffering.

“The blade was usually narrow,” Jet mutters suddenly, and he’s not even sure if Zuko can hear him, because Zuko glances up at him, and looks to his lips. Perhaps the vibrations of Jet’s vocal cords upset everything with their rumbles.

“It stung more, that way. I was always worried that it would get infected. But it never did. They never did.”

Zuko’s cheek is soft against Jet’s neck, and Jet feels warmth in his throat. It’s not the cold that he’s been accustomed to for all these years, but the fresh mottled warmth like a hot day in winter.

Jet pulls Zuko’s torso closer, so that his arms wrap around him, wet with bathwater. He moves to nuzzle Zuko’s cheek, and he makes a sound resembling a purr.

“I love you,” he whispers. Zuko’s smile is warm and open, and Jet has missed this so much.

“I love you, too.” Zuko’s hand reaches up to cup Jet’s cheek, and Jet isn’t even sure how he _lived_ without his boyfriend’s touch for so long. With each touch the hole inside of Jet that craves opens wider. It reminds him of daydreams where Zuko doesn’t exist, where he can’t hold someone close like he does here. But that hurts him too much, so he focuses on the now.

Zuko kisses him and Jet beams. It is almost like an honour. But it is also a sacred moment, almost a prayer. In fact, if Zuko pulled away now, Jet would pray for him back, for his hands gliding, for the absence of voices and hatred in his mind.

These moments keep him feeling warm, like he’s being steadily and slowly thawed.

This is how he keeps on going.

 

 

 _Why am I alive?_ he thinks one day as he looks into the mirror. _Am I alive?_ His hands come up, and his fingers curl around his skin, searching and crawling for divots in the armour.

 _What am I doing here?_ His heart splutters with every thought, the absence of his heart growing and growing like weeds in the wood. Jet’s nails start to claw, try to peel away the outer layer. His mind races and he tries to sew all of his labels together like locations; roads on a map.

Anarchist, leader, important. Dangerous, invincible, god-like. Loved by all, worshipped for the forbiddenness of him, prayed to for just an echo of a kiss.

But he knows that this _isn’t him,_ anymore. This is who he was during the war. He’s gotten all of the times wrong.

A low whining sound settles at the base of the throat. His nails dig deeper into his cheeks and a thread of skin is dragged down along with the nail of his right middle finger. It builds in intensity as he steps back and leans against the bath. He reaches up and yanks at his hair so hard his teeth grit.

Finally the whine explodes and he bounds forward, slamming his palms down on the basin. “ _Where am I?!”_ he shrieks, almost screams, and his skin sings for blood.

Sometimes, when he’s alone, Jet screams. He leans nice and close to the mirror, opens his mouth, and lets a sound escape; just to remind him that he’s human. On these days, mist fogs over the mirror; clouds his face so that he’s just a silhouette of his former self. He interests himself in these mannequin displays; Jet always finishes by pulling his lips into a frown, and turning away.

 

 

One day Zuko’s sister comes for a visit. Jet is dubious about her, remembers that she was, by proxy, the result of the murder of his countrymen. But for crying out loud, she’s younger than he is, and she has fallen from glory long ago. Azula is always tired, something he can relate to, and when they’re left alone (however rarely it happens) he is glad to be left in silence.

Except one day she speaks. “I have Borderline Personality Disorder. And psychosis. That’s what’s wrong with me- I can tell you’ve been wondering.” She laughs, but it’s clumsy and old; like an eon-old scroll being read by eyes that can’t understand the language.

Jet mutters. “So do I. Borderline Personality Disorder. But no one else knows that. Not even Zuko.”

Azula smiles narrowly. She is narrow in everything she does; the thinness of her smile, the sharp angles and turns of her joints, her jaw, her nose. It’s like a life upon her face; a road that constantly changes its mind. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I’m still good at that, you know? Keeping secrets.”

“You never backstabbed your friends?”

She laughs again, her sarcastic notes drooping with earnest, broken humour. “Of course I did! But I chose to do that. And who did I backstab _to_? My father kept tabs on who I talked to. By the way, he would _hate_ you.”

Jet smiles suddenly. “Good. I wouldn’t want him to like me. All the better to hate him. He was a murderer who killed millions. He’s worse than scum.”

Azula shrugs. “Yeah, but he designed everything for me to love him. It was all pre-planned. My father was very cunning. My brother- my father called him my _sister_ of course- and I were my father’s real life dolls.”

She glances around, and her gaze falls on a mirror in the hall. It’s cracked- shattered pieces glued back into place. The glue lines are almost invisible, but Jet’s face still splinters when he walks past. “I see they fixed the mirror.”

Jet raises his eyebrows. “Oh? What happened to it?”

“I punched it out on the day of my coronation. I saw a hallucination of my mother. Saying some bullshit like how she loved me. She was wrong, though. Mother _hated_ me.” She says it nonchalantly, as if she’s a history teacher talking about a bare fact of the past that everyone knew and no one cared about. “Father hated Zuko, so it was right and fair of her to hate me. It was balancing the scales. Besides, Mother left when I was seven, so Ozai hated him longer than she even knew me.”

Jet shifts, slightly uncomfortably. He remembers how young Azula is- seventeen. A year older than he was when he moved to Ba Sing Se and met Zuko. His heart aches for Azula, but she doesn’t seem like the type to take pity lightly.

“So why did you punch out the mirror just because you saw your mother in it?”

Azula growls lightly, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to lash out. “She was _mocking_ me with her presence alone! And then she had to say _of course I’m not going to miss my daughter’s coronation._ Zuko was the heir! She liked him better! I wasn’t even her daughter, I was her _mistake!_ And then she had the gall to preach her ‘motherly’ crap everywhere. I couldn’t let her keep on. So I punched the mirror, it shattered, and I was alone. Like I was supposed to be.”

She turns to face Jet, and it’s like her eyes are unclouding, so much darker than Zuko’s, and she leans forward so that the hair falls over her face. “I’m considered a stereotype of my- _our_ disorder. I’m not exactly good representation. I am manipulative and cunning. I’m the royal bitch of the Fire Nation! But I am not the Lord of the Fire Nation, so I may as well be the queen of dogs, huh? Is that not fair.”

“I guess so,” Jet says.

Azula smiles then, and she may as well be fourteen again. “I like you. You don’t try to affirm what I’m feeling, but you don’t deny it. You don’t say, ‘What you’re saying is right’, so that doesn’t make my lies feel like grasping for affirmation from those who don’t care.”

Azula’s face sobers, again. He’s learning that her emotions are an antithesis to his, so easily changed. She is nothing like the unaffected girl he’s heard about, immune to all but her father.

It’s probably the therapy, he decides.

“You know, my fire is blue. See?” She sticks her index in the air and a flicker of blue light tinged with bright red spurts from the fingertip before diminishing. “It used to be a lot more impressive. They like to say that blue fire is the hottest; but apparently in the depths of the Southern Water Tribe the ice is so cold that it burns you. That’s what I think about my fire. That’s what we feel inside, you more-so.”

Jet shifts again, and he suddenly wants to be so, _so_ far away from this girl of smouldering ashes and blue sparks in her hands.

Azula laughs again, but now it’s all humour and no sarcasm. “See? I can still get people down-pat! I figured you out! That’s why you don’t eat, that’s why you wear your long sleeves, that’s why you love Zuko! Because he gives you the warmth you can’t get yourself.”

“I would love him without his warmth!” Jet snaps.

Azula grins. “Yes, I know. But it’s still a huge plus to fucking him. Lots and lots of heat. Lots and lots of fire and heat and warmth. When you are with him your heart boils over. When he goes away you’re cold again. You’re good for each other. You’re not going to get better for a long time, if you ever do; but you’d be so much worse without him.”

They both stop talking, Jet glaring at the ground, hot behind his eyes; Azula smiling smugly at him and tipping her chin just so. Eventually Zuko returns and Jet reaches out for him. Azula laughs as he does so.

“See?!” she cackles, and he’s not sure who she’s talking to, “I can still get you all figured out! I am still Azula! I am still here!”

 

 

Jet sleeps with his chin tucked into Zuko’s shoulder, his chest rumbling with a purr. He loves this time of day, the consuming heat of his boyfriend seeping into his chest and spreading through his body. Waking to this is the ultimate way to make him sigh in comfort, his worries temporarily gushing from his body as his chest sinks in rapture.

But when Zuko’s not there, he worries. Of course he is. An eighteen-year-old bisexual on a trembling, practically transparent, throne- He’s the bullseye for assassination. But Jet should’ve woken, he should’ve- Zuko’s robe sleeve has been cut. He wheels into the kitchen in a nervous flurry to find Zuko eating breakfast, smiling happily up at Jet.

“I thought you were _dead,”_ Jet gasps. He doesn’t feel any anger, just relief, and he slumps in his chair and allows the soreness in his chest to crawl into its cave.

He rubs the back of his head and looks up at Zuko, who is watching him with an amused frown. “That’s why I cut my robe.”

“Your _favourite_ robe?”

Zuko snickers and sips his tea as Jet stares in disbelief. “I didn’t want to wake you, love.”

“ _Your favourite robe,_ Zuko.”

Zuko shrugs. “My favourite person.”

Jet goes silent. He almost blushes, even. The rush of love he feels for Zuko is suddenly so intense that he’s dizzy and he leans across for him, loving the feel of Zuko’s hands, loving the feel of Zuko’s skin at all. Jet wonders, for a moment, at his own skin. Jet’s mind starts to wander what Zuko feels.

Imagining his own skin feels alien, like standing on the face of Venus. His skin should theoretically feel like Zuko’s. Although in this case Zuko’s the hotter one, he thinks and chuckles to himself before turning serious again.

He’s subconsciously started brushing his fingers over his own wrist. He rubs with his thumb and tries not to frown at the rise of a scar, glistening silver. His arm feels it more, though, the brush of his finger. His thumb runs over the vein and he imagines it blue, pumping into his hand, pulsing with movement.

“Jet, what are you doing?”

Jet shakes his head back to reality. “I was just wandering what my skin feels like to you. Because yours is so nice to hold and all.” He smiles and tries to figure out if he’s acting too awkward.

Zuko blushes quicker than Jet, and brighter. His face tinges a slight pink and he chuckles. “Well, your skin feels…rough. In a good way. I love your hands.”

Jet nods, and looks away, smiling.

 

 

Eventually they talk about a reunion with the Gaang. Zuko wants them to come to the palace, spend a week. Old friends, he says. Jet chuckles and says, “Yeah. I knew them too, you know.”

So they’re not going to be alone. They make arrangements, sleeping and otherwise. Katara will spend some time in one room, Sokka and Suki in the room next to her, Toph and Aang in another. Jet is excited, he thinks, but he also feels afraid.

He’s not sure about them. He cares about these people. They probably care about him too, in some weird way. But they care about Zuko, too. How long will Jet spend alone? He misses his siblings.

But he does it for Zuko. He’ll do this for Zuko just like Zuko would with Jet’s siblings. It still hurts, though.

And it’s getting colder, Jet thinks, but nobody else seems to notice. He’s often caught unawares by breezes. The chill sweeps him, and it’s almost like the inside is threading out.

Katara steps off of the boat first, her hair lacking beads, her eyes blazing with joy. She seems to have filled up, grown with happiness. Jet hopes he’s not projecting images.

She flings herself to Zuko, first. Jet knows he’s being silly, _knows_ he’s being irrational, but he has to fight the taste of bile on his tongue. But then she’s hugging him, and it’s like they’re old friends.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s okay,” he mutters.

Later, when they sit in the living room, Katara and Zuko talk about inside jokes that Jet doesn’t understand, ask how each other is with undertones that Jet could never get. _You should have married her instead,_ Jet thinks for a moment. _You would be happier._ He catches himself unawares with the thought, and he hates himself for it. Hates himself for his hatred.

Jet whispers something about a sore stomach and slinks back to Zuko’s and his bedroom, barely noticed.

Later that night Zuko slips into bed too, and wraps his arms around Jet’s waist. “Jet? Jet, I know you’re awake. You snore when you sleep.”

Jet snorts. “No, that’s _you._ ”

Zuko shakes his head, kisses the nape of Jet’s head. “You didn’t feel happy tonight, did you?”

Jet stammers for words, wants to lie and make sure Zuko doesn’t think bad things. _I can only be happy, there is no_ room _for my sadness. If I’m sad he gets sad. If I’m always sad then he gets sadder._ “They’re your friends. It doesn’t matter. Plus, it was them you saw the end of the world with.”

Zuko sighs, rolls onto his back. “I’m sorry. It’s only for a week. I’ll try and include you more.”

Jet shakes his head and chuckles half-heartedly. “I’ll brush up on my reading skills. To them I’m _still_ dead. And besides, they probably _aren’t_ ignoring me, I just feel like you- they are.”

Zuko’s fingers intertwine with Jet’s, his thumb rubbing over Jet’s knuckles. The ex-rebel takes pleasure in this, or tries to. He can’t blame Zuko, he decides.

“I’ll try not to make you feel like that. It’s just a bit hard. I’ve missed them.”

Jet nods, falling to rest. “I know, Zuko. I missed a few of them too. But I didn’t see the end of the world with them.”

Sokka and Suki come, and Sokka looks vaguely watchful but he gives Jet a brief hug anyway, clapping him heartily on the back. Jet is bashful, though, and he knows that he isn’t wanted here. No one will say it, of course, but he can fill in the silences, and eventually he makes room for their conversations. Zuko shoots him a look of regret, but Jet grins wider.

Jet slides out of his wheelchair and over to a wall. His head droops and his hand wipes over his face. “Ugh.”

_Unwanted. No one cares._

Jet shakes the thought away, but in the days to come it will grow more resistant, and he will despise the thought even more.

A noise rustles from above him.

He glances up at Suki. She sits down next to him and he takes quick note of her facial features. Red hair tumbles from her head to a bit below her shoulders, and her eyes are bluish brown. Her nose is small, button-like above her burgundy-painted lips.

“Sorry,” Jet mumbles, inching away. “You need this space?”

“No, it’s fine,” Suki shrugs.

“Why aren’t you out there with them?”

She shrugs again, and turns her face towards him. “You know how it is. Sometimes you get those…social overloads, I guess.”

Jet nods, turning his body to face her. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m out here, obviously.” He snorts. “Plus, you guys are all the Gaang. I’m not. I’m fine with that, of course, but it still goes to show.”

Suki smiles. “I barely am. I pretty much only _know_ Sokka. I can’t say I’ve had any _deep and meaningful_ conversations with anyone else.”

The Fire Lord’s boyfriend grunts in affirmation. “Yeah well…I’m Katara’s ex? But I’m pretty sure we only dated for a week or so. Although that week was _nice_ and all, it still ended up with her freezing me to a tree.”

“But you did help with getting Appa back to them?”

Jet scoffs. “At the cost of my life. I love the guy, but was it really worth being _brainwashed?_ Do _not_ tell anyone I said that. Especially not Aang.”

She chuckles against her palm. “Your secret’s safe with me. And I also helped out with Appa on that incident of being lost. He was… He was in circus gear when I found him. And _then_ I got captured by Azula, separated from my sisters, and sent to a mens’ prison. Is that really _necessary.”_

“Ugh, I’m so sorry. You’re the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, right?”

Suki nods, “And you’re the leader of the Freedom Fighters.”

“You know it.”

“Continually destroying cisgender heterosexuals everywhere, huh?”

Jet laughs, then. He is shocked by the rumble in his chest. “Yeah. Fuck those guys. Add in Fire Nation to the equation and you’ve got my gang in a nutshell.”

The Kyoshi Warrior grins, leaning against the wall. “Your name’s Jet, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure I remember that.”

He nods, and stretches his arms behind his head. “One syllable names are easy to remember. And you’re Suki?”

“Only one or two in the Fire Nation who would remember _that,_ let alone anything else. Also, how the _fuck_ did you end up becoming Fire Nation.”

“I am _not_ Fire Nation. I just live here! Also, in the future my name will probably be ‘That guy the Fire Lord had an affair with.’” He rolls his eyes, smiling and happy. “Also they’ll probably call me gay.”

“They’ll call me straight. And cis.”

“Don’t even get me started.”

The two of them chuckle at that, Jet smiling warmly and leaning against the wall.

“Remember when we actually did shit? That was, say, for the good of our nation. Fighting against the Fire Nation? Those were good times.” Jet sighs. “Causing havoc and raising our armies. Did you cause havoc?”

Suki shrugs, now. “I don’t know if I caused _havoc._ I’d want to, I think. Maybe.”

Suddenly Jet thrusts his arm out. “How about it? An alliance of the Freedom Fighters and the Kyoshi Warriors. If it’s ever needed, we’re there for each other. Alert me of any assassins. Or, I’ll alert you. Well if you have more than you can handle then I’m there for backup.”

Suki frowns curiously, but leans forward and shakes his hand. “That sounds good, I think.”

“Then again, I’ll probably fuck it up. If you want to we can…not be allies. I don’t mind!”

“Oh no, I want to. I’m just- you’re suspiciously nice.”

Jet makes a noise of disagreement, glancing away. “Thank you.”

Then Suki tips her head in the direction of the others. “We can back each other up in social interaction. I don’t think you can really _fuck up_ not talking to anyone but each other.”

Jet nods enthusiastically. “That sounds good. Let’s go.”

 

 

Zuko is happier now that he’s noticed that Jet doesn’t leave anymore, but stays in the corner with Suki, laughing and occasionally glancing at the other people in the room. When Jet locks eyes with Zuko he likes do things that make him blush. Sometimes he smirks and licks his lips, sometimes he winks, and sometimes it’s as simple as looking Zuko up and down and nodding. Either way, the blush and splutter of Zuko in response to this makes Jet simply grin like a devil.

Suki and Sokka leave for political ties to Kyoshi, and before she leaves Suki gives Jet a firm hug, wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders as she leans down. “I’ll write. Thanks for not letting anyone bother me. I owe you one.” She sends him a grin as she boards the boat, and then it’s just him and the rest of the Gaang on the boardwalk.

As he once again becomes the elephant in the room, Jet isolates again. He roams the halls of the palace, discovers places he’s never been before, places even _Zuko_ might not have visited. He feels himself becoming ghost-like, orients himself towards the ache that strums forever inside his ribs, the silence inside his body that spins like threat and ties his limbs together, that makes him waste away.

He knows what he has to do, but it makes him shudder to think of it. He goes anyway.

Azula is kept under house arrest in a cottage at the edge of the Caldera, pushed as far as she can be without being crushed into the rise of the Caldera’s edge. It doesn’t take too long to get there by carriage to the edge of town; and he goes down a few streets himself.

He meets Li and Lo at the door and they guide him inside.

He never imagined a place so small could hold someone like the Fire Princess. But it does. It’s made of mudbrick, its floored with slate; and someone has planted _flowers_ outside. One of the twins calls for Azula, says that she has a guest.

Azula appears in the hall, her hair swept into a ponytail at the last minute. She’s smiling placidly. “I know, I know,” she says, and leans her shoulder against the door frame. “You can go outside, you two. He knows he’s safe with me. Don’t you?”

Jet wants to say _No. I don’t feel safe with you at all,_ but he knows that’s not what she means. She won’t hurt him. So he nods. “You can leave us.”

“Yeah. We’re friends, and my therapy’s gone really well the past few months! If you hear screaming you can come back in. For now, you are dismissed.” She waves her hand and the twins leave. She straightens. “So, would you like to come in? To sit down?”

“Well, I’m already sitting down, I suppose.”

Azula snorts. “You know what I mean, Zuko’s boyfriend. Come into the living room so that I can sit and won’t have an advantage over you.”

She still talks like a weapon. Jet knows that she’ll never hurt him- she’ll never hurt anyone. She has nothing to gain, anymore. But Azula is still Azula, bred from blood and warfare, raised amongst gods and drowned among ashes. You can take the girl out of the war, but you can’t take the war out of the girl.

She takes a seat in a gold and red chair. The walls are white, and they don’t suit her at all.

“Did you- did you plant the flowers out the front?”

Azula smiles, warmly. “Yes, yes I did. I mean, I’m not allowed off the property, so what else am I supposed to do?”

Jet shrugs. “Die, I suppose. But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

The seventeen-year-old giggles. _Giggles._ “No, not until someone speeds along the process at least. But one day I’m going to run away.”

“And why did you tell me that?”

“Because you won’t tell anyone.”

He realises that even though she’s sitting, even out here, her life is one of dominance. People hate her, would kill her on site, but she still will always have a step up on them. She’s smirking, now. This is her favourite game, figuring them out and watching them squirm.

Jet sighs. “What are you going to do after you run?”

“Run a florist.” She bursts with laughter, tipping her head and letting the noise rip through her in a sudden eruption. “I’ll raise violets and roses and nightshade and belladonna and poppies.” She giggles, still, with barely contained rapture. “And eventually when they catch me they’ll say: _Oh, the Fire Princess sold me_ bluebells- Me! Raising bluebells! Don’t you think that that would be funny?”

Jet chuckles. “I thought you were going to raise nightshade and belladonna?”

Azula claps her hands and looks at him as though she is proud. As if he’s satisfied her greatly. “You paid attention! You’re the best therapist I’ve ever had!”

Jet grins. “I’m not a therapist, though.”

“That’s alright. But you’d make a good one.”

Jet nods. “Thank you, then.”

The Fire Princess grins widely, and it makes Jet feel like a beaver-dog being given the attention, the warmth he needs. It scares him, he’d be lying if he called himself brave, but it’s still _nice._

“I knew it was you, you know. You took longer to get here than I wanted you to, but I suppose I’m a- a _reluctant_ person to visit. It doesn’t bother me, don’t worry, but it did waste my time. You’ll do better next time, though.”

Jet grumbles because _of course_ he’s going to visit her again.

 “I- I- yeah. I suppose if you can deduce everything about me in three point four seconds flat, you’re going to know how long it takes for me to visit. How long were you expecting me to take?”

Azula giggles again. “I said how long I _wanted_ you to, not how long I _expected_ you. And it doesn’t matter, in the long run. See? You wasted my time with waiting for you, and I’ve been wasting your time with small talk. You’re not that good at it, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Jet sighs. Seventeen-year-old Fire Princesses can be _exhausting,_ but this is better than what he hoped for.

But then the giggles cease and she returns to a state of placidness, looking directly at him. “What is it that you want to know? What about our disorder remains a mystery to you?”

Jet isn’t even shocked anymore. Just tired. He rests his head against his hand. “I want it to go away. I don’t like this. I want to be- I want to be _normal,_ I suppose.”

“You’re never going to be normal. You’re fucking the Fire Lord so-”

“You know what I mean!”

“You’re right, I do.” Azula momentarily smiles wide enough so that her cheeks turn her eyes into crescents.

Jet snorts, “Of course. But, thing is. I never asked for this. I never asked to be borderline, I just wanted to _survive,_ I didn’t want to be _this.”_

Azula raises an eyebrow. “You think _I_ did? I just wanted to rule the Fire Nation. But the first thing mothers teach us is that you don’t always get what you want, right? I never listened. I was a _princess._ ”

Jet glares at the ground. “I don’t remember my mother so you can’t blame me for not paying attention.”

“I remember mine, but I don’t care about her.”

 _Yes you do,_ Jet thinks, _You care about her a lot._

“But will I ever be rid of this? Will I get better?”

Azula shrugs, and the smile is one of sympathy. “I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take you a long time. So long that it’ll feel like centuries when it’s been a decade. It’ll be hard. Even then, it’s likely that you’ll never be _fixed_ like you want to be. But you’ll get better.”

“Oh.”

She leans forward and everything is serious in her gaze. “The thing is, you always run into corners. You think that it’s Zuko who you will never reach, but it’s not. It’s _you_ who will always go where he can’t follow. That’s just logic.”

Jet lowers his head. “How can I keep _doing_ this to him?”

“I don’t know. You love him and his love too much, I guess.”

Jet trembles at the sudden weight on his shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I _do._ I don’t deserve him.”

Azula sighs laboriously, and uncrosses her legs. “Tell me you hate me.”

Jet looks up at her suddenly, frowning. “No? Why would I do that?”

“You mean you _don’t_ hate me?”

Jet shakes his head. “No. Not anymore. Never you in particular.”

“Oh,” Azula looks uncomfortable and Jet hates himself for feeling triumphant. “Say it anyway. It’ll make you feel better. Pretend you do hate me.”

“But whenever I hated something I blew it up.”

“Pretend you’re making a grand speech just before you blow me up, then. _My name is Jet of the Earth Kingdom, you killed my father, prepare to die.”_

Jet chuckles, but shrugs. “I don’t want to. So I won’t.”

Azula smiles again, eyes bright. “That’s a start.”

Jet’s eyes fall upon the clock and he’s shocked by the time. “That took longer than I thought. I have to go.”

“To _your love?_ ” Azula teases him, getting to her feet. “I’ll walk with you down the path.”

Jet nods and they walk down the dirt path to the road where he’ll begin his journey home. “Send me a flower or two, sometime. I’ll raise them well.”

Azula nods. “My favourite flowers are roses and poppies.”

Jet’s lips part in concentration. “Not nightshade and belladonna?”

She shakes her head. “Roses and poppies.”

 

 

That night he curls against Zuko, loneliness settling like a demon between his shoulders. His face presses into Zuko’s chest. “I missed you today,” he mumbles, and he hears Azula’s laughter inside his head. He shudders at the sound, and Zuko’s warm hand settles on the slope of his back, raising goosebumps.

“Didn’t you have fun, though? Surely it’s nice to spend a bit of time without me.”

Jet squeezes his eyes shut. “I guess, but I still missed you. I always miss you.”

Zuko’s fingers stroke through Jet’s hair. “I always miss you, too.”

Jet nods, and he feels a sensation like tears in his throat, nails in his eyes, pain in the echo of his silence. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“What for?” Zuko whispers, slurs.

“I just am.”

 

 

A week later, there’s a rush of news as it becomes known that the Fire Princess has escaped her enclosure ( _queen of dogs,_ Jet remembers) and is at large. People wait for news of murder, of havoc, but there’s nothing. They say that it’s suspicious that nothing has happened, but Jet doesn’t agree. He wonders where her flower shop is. She looks different, no doubt, and he wonders about that, too.

Parts of her get left behind, too. Someone anonymously sells her favourite dress; the severed cut of her hair.

And finally, after a month, he gets a delivery from an anonymous sender. A pot of rose and poppy seeds that he plants in the gardens; he watches as the roses climb up the walls to touch the sun.

 

 

Jet watches everything around him, and he thinks too much. Thinks about Zuko, thinks about Azula, thinks about his siblings. Sometimes he sits in the garden and stares at Azula’s flowers. The roses are the climbing kind and they are rich red, a colour so deep he never thought it possible. Their green vines wrap up the inside wall of the palace; pushed by the water he feeds them.

 _Who will water you when I’m gone,_ he thinks, not really conscious of his thoughts. _A gardener, I suppose._

He lies next to the pond and watches the turtleducks at the corner of his eye. They glide innocent and ignorant over the water, and eventually they swim towards him, expecting food. He doesn’t move, though, and they eventually give up.

His head rests against his upper arm and he could fall asleep like this. Jet relaxes as he feels the chill start to pick up, the clouds crowding in. When they release their rain, he lets it soak through him. It drips from his nose, his hair.

Eventually he becomes aware of being lifted, and he zones in to see Zuko’s golden eyes, the firebender’s arms wrapping around him, holding him close. Jet’s head rests against his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed. “Finally,” he mutters.

“You’re going to get sick,” Zuko mutters as they step inside and make their way down the halls. Jet laughs, kind of, but then shudders.

“Finally,” he repeats, nuzzling into Zuko’s heat, letting it enclose him.

Zuko spends a lot of time with Katara, now that she’s officially here for political reasons. Jet wishes that he wasn’t alone so much, but now he raises his flowers, coaxes them ever higher. Unfortunately, his thoughts get darker, until all they are is ash. He misses Azula, he decides. He misses Smellerbee and the Duke and the rest of them. He misses _Zuko._

But it’s better that he’s gone. They don’t worry about him, then. They are actually _happy_ without him, without the weight he drags around with him. He was an idiot to think they couldn’t see past that wall of smiles and happiness.

He stops remembering that, too. But it doesn’t matter, now, since there isn’t a smile to see.

_Zuko is good without me, loves being without me. Smellerbee loves it too._

Jet places his head in his hands, willing tears to come, but they never do.

 _Oh Jet. You want love, but was it not you who killed your siblings._ He shudders, leans further forwards. _You can never make up for that, can you? The only thing worth a life is a life._

Jet gulps at his aching, clutches at it. He sniffs.

_They are better without you. You can finally be perfect, if you are dead. They say that the spirits are perfect, and you can be a spirit._

This isn’t the first time that Jet has thought this, nowhere near the first time. But this is the first that a thought has been this bad, this blatant.

His hands close around his face and he trembles, shakes his head from side to side. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, as if that can make up for years of lives that he wasn’t supposed to live. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t feel anything.”

_Sorry isn’t good enough. Sorry has never been good enough. Not from you._

_“_ Fine. I _agree_ with you, though! Is that good enough,” he shudders.

Jet hears the silence in his head, and nods.

 

 

Zuko is exhausted, but Jet has to ask him. “Zuko?” Zuko grunts at him to go to sleep, but Jet pushes his shoulder.

The Fire Lord groans, squinting through the darkness. He lifts his finger out of the bedsheets and lights a steady candlelight so that he can see Jet. “What is it? Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m great, nothing about me. I just had to ask you something.”

“If your fingers had mouths then jacking off would feel like a blowjob. That good?”

Jet laughs quietly, kisses Zuko’s cheek. “Thank you. But no.”

“What do you want to know?”

Jet glances around nervously. “I just need to know one thing. Will you think of me tomorrow?”

Zuko frowns. “Of course. I think of you 24/7, tomorrow won’t be an exception.”

_You will stop thinking of me, eventually._

Jet nods. “Okay. Also, if anything ever happens to me, will- will you water the flowers for me?”

Zuko sighs, stroking Jet’s cheek. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. Don’t worry.”

“Hypothetically.”

“I’d water them for you. It’ll be fine, though.”

The rebel nods again but doesn’t say anything. “Goodnight, then. I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

Zuko leans forward, pressing a light kiss to Jet’s forehead. “Okay, I’ll try not to.”

Jet kisses Zuko goodbye in the morning, wraps his arms around Zuko as if trying to anchor him. “Tell Smellerbee I say goodbye, too.”

“Jet, what the fuck?” Zuko frowns, but Jet just laughs and kisses the frown from his lips.

 

 

Afterwards he slips a knife up his sleeve during a visit to the kitchen and sneaks away to Zuko’s garden, unnoticed by all. He dangles his feet in the water for a little bit, but it’s so cold that he has to pull them out.

He shudders for a little bit, eyeing the tool in his hand. He brushes the blade over his skin a few times; not hard enough to leave a mark. Jet’s heart gets palpitations every time it touches a vein, though. He realises that he doesn’t want to do it here, not in Zuko’s garden, so he goes inside again, but then he wants to be somewhere where it’s light and there are birds so he goes outside again.

He finally does it and so he slips out of the wheelchair and he thumps onto the ground at the same time as his heart thumps because it’s trying so hard to sew his skin together but not this wound not this one no because isn’t it nice dying where there are birds nearby and it’s so bright and there’s your sister singing you to sleep and brushing your hair from your forehead and the ones that you love singing you to sleep and not hating you anymore and singing singing you to sleep they love you they promise they do and they’re never going to hate you anymore not ever ever again…

Ever since she learned bloodbending, she’s payed attention to people’s hearts. She can’t not; it’s a habit that Katara can’t break. And besides, sometimes it’s good. She can suss out anyone foreign, anyone who wasn’t _invited_. Sometimes she plays with it, dabbles with seeing how someone in the palace is doing.

They’re in a long meeting full of elderly men who bore her, and bore Zuko, too. So she latches onto Jet’s heartbeat. It’s a heavy heart, one that stresses a lot. Katara focuses on the beating of his small grey heart, trying to see what state it is in.

Suddenly the air freezes, and his blood is pulsing, his heartbeat going _haywire._ Katara jolts from her seat. Something bad must have happened, she hadn’t noticed anyone else in the palace.

“Important business,” she yells and runs from the meeting room. She knows that they’re judging her retreating _Southern_ back, and Zuko’s probably watching her curiously and kind of wishing she wouldn’t leave him alone in this room of politicians.

She bolts, because the only thing she knows is that Jet is injured. An injury that makes his heart burst and splutter and try but fail. Katara runs but she doesn’t know how bad it is and so she tracks him to the gardens.

Jet’s unconscious by the time she gets there, and she is too scared to scream. He’s bleeding heavily and if it were a normal wound it would have stopped bleeding but it’s too _deep_ and it’s going to kill him if she doesn’t-

Katara practically pounces onto his body. His face is pale, and she has to use _it_ to sew it back together. She manages, but she is so, so scared by the time it’s done.

He is still unconscious.

“Shit shit shit,” Katara mutters and picks him up and struggles against the weight; but then the adrenaline manages to get them all the way to Zuko’s room. There’s a moment of panic as she looks for someone to keep him company, but she leaves the room and sees a maid, who agrees to look after him.

Katara runs back to the meeting room, where the door is heavy to push.

“Ambassador Katara?” Zuko asks. “Are you alright?”

Katara realises the weight of it, then. She realises that she’s just seen Jet almost die. _Again._ And no one tried to kill him but him. She gasps, settling her hands on her knees. “It was Jet. It was _Jet.”_

Zuko frowns. “What about him?” The ministers look at each other, they probably say something, but it’s not important.

“He was injured- I mean. I was monitoring him, seeing if his heart was okay and then it went _insane_ and- he’s injured. He’s in your room now, being watched over.”

Zuko straightens, his eyes widening. “Is he okay, then?”

“I think- He was unconscious when I found him. He was unconscious when I left him in your room to find you.”

Zuko jolts from his seat, now. “Meeting postponed.” He ducks away from the chair and grabs Katara’s wrist as he leaves the room, waiting for a few minutes for most of the men to leave and him and Katara to be alone.

He turns to her. “Is he okay? How bad was he?”

“Zuko. He was _bad-_ he was bleeding so badly, I got there in time though. He almost- Shit, if I hadn’t been monitoring him, _shit.”_ Katara reaches forward and grips Zuko’s hands. “Zuko, we need to go to him. I’ll explain on the way.”

As she pulls him quickly down the halls, she whispers. “I found him in the garden and he was bleeding really badly from his wrists and he was lying there. His eyes were closed and he was pale. He was going to die, Zuko. But I found him. If I- Just five minutes later- I’m sorry.”

Zuko is simply shocked numb, though. But now he’s starting to realise the gravity of the situation tumbling into him. “So Jet was- You’re saying that someone tried to kill Jet? And almost succeeded?”

“I’m saying that _Jet_ almost tried to kill Jet and almost succeeded.”

Zuko is paling as he walks faster, forcing Katara to skip behind him. “You mean he attempted to- to-”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

 

 

Jet wakes up- again. He’s in the infirmary now, surrounded by a sea of whiteness. He’s the only one there. When his eyes open he spots a person sitting on his covers, dressed in blue. “Where am I? I don- don’t know this place.”

The person looks up at his face and he knows her, but he’s too tired to recognise her. She frowns, then fall forward. “Jet! You _fucking_ idiot!”

“Am I dead?”

“ _No,_ thank the spirits, you’re alive.”

“I’m sorry.”

Katara pulls away and Jet can see that tears are streaking her face, her eyes are red. “How the _fuck_ can you say that! _How_ the _fuck._ ” Her breath trembles on the edge of breaking and splitting and erupting all of her guts and all of her emotions everywhere.

But Jet isn’t sure if he feels anything. “I just open my mouth and-”

“That’s not what I _mean,_ idiot. W-why did you do it? This?”

Jet shrugs, glancing away. “It doesn’t m-”

“If you say it doesn’t matter I swear- I thanked you for being alive when I first got here. And _then_ this happens!”

Jet shuts his eyes, fighting against the tears brimming. “I-I thought that Zuko, that all of you guys would be better without me? I thought that I wasn’t- I thought that Zuko would be happier with me gone.”

Katara’s fists are balling and he thinks she might slap him. “ _Zuko_ has been _in that chair_ the entire time you’ve been unconscious!”

“How long was that?”

“Two days. The whole time.”

Jet glances up at her, in that moment hating her with his whole heart. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this.

“If I were dead then he’d get over it and he’d grow old and he’d be happy with someone better and kinder and less fucked up than me.”

Katara lets an aggravated noise come from behind her tongue, somewhere between a grunt and a growl and a howl and something like silence. “Jet. If you were dead I don’t think he’d ever get over it. He’d never stop thinking about you. It’s been eight years since my mother died, and I have _never_ stopped thinking about her, and I never will. No one is better without you. Only worse. If you die- die like _this,_ Zuko will remember that for the rest of his life. He will never forgive himself.”

Jet frowns, glances back up at her. “He’s asleep? Should we wake him up? I want to see him, but he wants to sleep.”

Katara snorts and shakes her head. The subject of Zuko lowers the tension in the room. “He’s been sleep deprived all week, but he wants to see you more than anything.”

“What would he prefer? The surprise of me being awake when he wakes up, or the surprise of me waking him up?”

At that moment they’re interrupted by a yawn. They both look over, Katara stepping off of the bed, smiling. Zuko looks at Jet, and his eyes flash wide open. Then he is _running_ and falling into Jet; his arms wrapping around Jet’s neck and gripping him so tight Jet can feel his breath burst.

“Hi there, Li,” he huffs, his arms coming to rest around Zuko’s back. The firebender is weeping. Katara gives Jet a nod and leaves the room, leaving the Fire Lord and his love alone.

Zuko doesn’t even move, it seems. He stays with his head buried in Jet’s shoulder, his breath coming in quivers and quakes from the centre of his chest. “Say it again. Say that again.”

Jet’s fingers curl in Zuko’s hair. “Hi there, Li?”

Zuko nods, his breath snivelling. “That sounds nice. I like that. Say my name like that.”

Jet runs his hand over Zuko’s back. “You prefer Li to Zuko?”

“I prefer _you,_ ” Zuko interrupts, clashing his mouth into Jet’s, teeth whacking against each other so that pain yelps through Jet’s system. But Zuko doesn’t notice, or care, only fills Jet with the taste of smoke and salt. “Even if you are an idiot.”

Jet slips his fingers easily through Zuko’s hair, pulling Zuko closer, always closer, filling up the hole inside of him with kisses and smoke.

Jet is moved from the infirmary to Zuko’s room. Someone has to keep an eye on him 24/7 in case he falls into another depressive state. Zuko tries to do it as often as possible, between paperwork and meetings and basically anything not revolving around Jet.

 

 

At night, though, he peels off all of his clothing and armour and wilts into his and Jet’s bed. Tonight is the first night he’ll breach the question he’s been needing to ask.

“Why?” Zuko asks, slipping under the covers and letting his head fall against Jet’s chest. He’s been in this room all day, but he doesn’t really matter. He likes being surrounded by Zuko, even when said Zuko isn’t there physically.

But now that he _is_ here, Jet satisfies his need for touch by wrapping his arms around Zuko and breathing him in, his restraints falling away.

“Hmmm?” Jet mumbles, kissing Zuko’s temple.

Jet’s struck suddenly by a need to know what others think of him and his situation. Does anyone know? Has he been turned into a secret, or has his name broken out as _The Fire Lord’s crazy boyfriend._ Then again, the bar for crazy has been put pretty high by the other members of the royal family.

_Crazy is better than dead. I’d rather be crazy than gone._

“Why did you do-” Zuko’s breath hitches “ _It.”_

Jet looks at him. “I’m so-”

“You don’t need to apologise again. I just- I need to know what happened? What did we _do?_ I’m so sorry, I thought you were happy again and I just- I don’t- I don’t know. I need to know so I can prevent it, so that I can _help_ you.”

Jet sighs and rests his chin on Zuko’s head. “I don’t really- I don’t know.”

Zuko’s breath starts to shake against Jet’s chest, but he forces his words out with brute force. “I did it before, too. When I- When I was on the ship? After I was exiled.”

Jet’s hand brushes through Zuko’s soft hair, tugging lightly as he goes. His free arm glides over Zuko’s scarred back. He glances over to the floor, where Zuko has kicked his pants and left them. He likes that, to be honest. It’s a Ba Sing Se sort of thing.

“What happened?”

Zuko sobs slightly. “I-Father said I could return if I captured the Avatar. He _knew_ it was impossible, and so did I. People always remarked that it was stupid of me to pursue a figure of myths and legend- but I _knew_ that. I did. I knew that I couldn’t find him, and could never make my father proud of me.”

Jet shuts his eyes closed and grips Zuko closer.

“I just- I just _couldn’t._ They say that you’re supposed to feel better afterwards, or that’s what I’ve heard, but I didn’t.”

“I feel better,” Jet lies, but this time Zuko catches him out.

“Please tell me the truth, Jet. You haven’t really told me the truth about your feelings in a long while.”

Jet snorts. “They don’t mea-”

Zuko grabs his wrist and pulls it from his head. Zuko’s eyes are sharp, deathly so. Jet shudders. “Jet. You tried to kill yourself. Don’t say that they don’t mean anything because they evidently do!”

Jet frowns. “But they _don’t._ My feelings _don’t_ matter anymore; they haven’t in years! I have no reason to complain, to be honest. No one needs to put up with them.”

“ _I_ do! I need them, because if you aren’t honest to me, how will I live with the knowledge that you could be acting perfectly fine and then _this_ happens?”

Jet bites down on his lower lip, stifling a growl. “I’m so sorry, Zuko, I really am. But I can’t- I can’t burden you with my emotions. I just can’t. I’ve never been able to! Ever since the Fire Nation took everything away. I’m not- not allowed to feel things, in our world.”

Zuko quivers harder than even Jet. He picks up Jet’s wrist and kisses the scab of Jet’s misdoing, light enough that it doesn’t hurt. It contains all of his life, Jet thinks. That’s where it almost ended, and then started again. That’s where he keeps both his death and his living.

“Why?” Zuko whispers.

“I was- Well, first of all I was a kid who was trying to survive with literally no one to look after him. Then I was a brother, an oldest. Then I was a _leader_ of kids trying not to die.”

Zuko sobs hard, for both of them. “But you were _happy_ now! You were with me, and we were happy, you said you were happy, why did you _do this_ after the war, when we’re so happy and revelling in it and-”

“I’m not important here. I haven’t been important for a long time. I was a leader, an anarchist, a guerrilla fighter. But I-I’m not useful here. Here, I’m nothing.”

Jet cries quietly, shutting his eyes and letting his shoulders shake with unreleased cries.

Zuko’s tears are hot and wet as his lips run the length of Jet’s scars. “No. No, you’re important to me, I need you, I need you.”

Jet nods, pressing his lips together; letting his eyes remain shut. “I don’t have a purpose anymore. I can’t help anyone.”

“I’m not sure how to fix it. I don’t know how, I want to make you feel a purpose but I’m not sure, I- I’m sorry-”

“I thought it would be better on you all. To have me gone.”

Zuko is silent. Then he shakes his head, his voice low and quiet. “You fucking idiot.”

 

Zuko starts teaching Jet to read. He teaches him the language and writing of the courts, shows Jet how to hold a calligraphy pen and weave his opinions into being. He starts to invite Jet to the government meetings, where Jet sits and judges each old man. In turn, their gazes slips between himself and the Fire Lord. There is some pleasure in Jet being able to lift an eyebrow. _That’s right. Zuko chose an Earth Kingdom peasant to share his bed with._

Jet doesn’t contribute at first, but he finds himself intrigued with the goings on of the court, the compromises going on between murderers and his own countrymen. They talk of compensation, and the contributions they wish to make to these poor orphans that they pretend they had nothing to do with. Jet smiles at them and imagines what it would be like to cut their heads off.

 Living in a country of war criminals is nothing to be taken lightly. It does something to your head, knowing that every person you see has had an indirect- or direct- hand in the slaughter of your people, your families, your _children_. Jet thinks about his siblings, the ones that he tried and failed to save. A fresh wave of rage passes through his body, but as he looks at these men who hate him. And they look back, their golden eyes whispering to the rage in their bones that the world succeeded.

 And so they play a game of mental cat and mouse. He imagines them going back the their homes painted in rich red, going back to wives. Going back to children who will inherit their sins. And the injustice is like venom in Jet’s veins, that these criminals will get to be called ‘Daddy’ and ‘Grandpa’, while thousands have had that stolen from them.

So he starts to build his life around showing these men that an Earth Kingdom peasant is not just _as good as_ them, but _better_. And for what it’s worth, he succeeds. He learns how to put aside his rough Earth Kingdom speech, and uses it only with Suki on her visits. They are like breaths of fresh air, the syllables coming shorter and almost seeming to be sung.

The years are getting older now, but Jet actually gets a therapist within the palace- and it works! For the first time in years, his confidence feels real and his smiles feel like they come easy. He still has bad days, but even though they drown him, he has Zuko at his side. But he learns, humans can’t be lifeboats. He was right when he knew that he couldn’t tell Zuko every little thing. But he knows that he’s not alone.

 

Jet tells Zuko the truth, but he doesn’t let it carry him down. He tells Zuko when he needs love, and he does paperwork with Zuko, while helping with productions of a new world. He helps establish schools, and orphanages, and hospitals.

When they’re old enough, and stable enough, they adopt a daughter called Izumi. She is light like Zuko, but she isn’t a firebender. Jet teaches her how to use his blades- and he keeps himself toned and knife-sharp. He explains to her why sometimes, some things don’t make him laugh quite the same way. But it’s okay.

One day, he is okay.

You don’t need to be perfect to be _okay_.

He opens his doors to some orphans of the Fire Nation. The ones from before, those children he once loved, they come back in shades of these ones. Death never gives back, he learns, but sometimes he sees an infant with eyes just like someone he’d known a long time ago. He wonders if there was something to those reincarnation stories.

Time goes on, and people don’t matter anymore. He fights a few assassination attempts, but at the end of the day, he finds his purpose in the little things. They are little, but in two generations from now, he will be remembered. He will be remembered as kind.

The world has no meaning. The world has no purpose. Jobs will vanish and roles that you establish for yourself will no longer fit.

Healing takes time. You have to be patient- sometimes it takes not just weeks, but months or years or decades. But it’ll be worth it, one day.

You’ll get there, one day.

 

 


End file.
